Vermont Town Schools Project
The Vermont Town Schools Project (VTSP) is an effort to create a community-led oral history collection that explores the relationship between small towns and their schools. Based on conversations with community leaders, the VTSP emerges in the context of recent policy reforms and that impact the future of town schools. As Vermont’s schooling landscape shifts, this project creates a space for people’s stories and experiences with town schools to be told, recorded, shared, and saved for posterity.
Vermont Folklife Center staff will support this community-led effort with training in ethnographic interviewing, research approaches, and media production. The resulting collection of audio interviews will be placed in VFC’s Archive and will be made accessible to the public. During the pilot phase of this project all activities are focused in Addison County. In time we hope to expand the VTSP to other counties as the entire state is grappling with these questions.
Town Schools Stories
Below you can listen to four audio stories that were created during the pilot phase of the Vermont Town Schools Project (VTSP) and with help from participants in the 2021 VFC Summer Institute: an educational opportunity providing training in community-based research and interviewing.
The resulting audio stories are presented here and represent the beginnings of the Vermont Town Schools Oral History Collection. These stories have been edited and some of them include narration from the interviewers. We hope you enjoy listening and that you’ll consider adding your voice to the project (see below).
HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE:
Share your perspective in an interview (can take place virtually or in person as you prefer)
Join a training session; learn to be an interviewer and record interviews for the oral history collection
Help with transcription, audio editing, and preparing files to be archived
Tell others about the project: spread the word through community outreach
If you live in Addison County and are interested in participating in the Vermont Town Schools Project please contact VFC Media and Education Specialist Mary Wesley with any questions. Thank you for your interest!